Virtual reality gives tech scene a new dimension

Google made waves last year with its Cardboard virtual reality headset. As the name suggests, the product is actually a just cardboard shell that houses a user's smartphone. With special software on the phone, the cardboard-smartphone combo becomes a makeshift VR headset. It's a simple trick that gave Google a foot in the emerging VR market, which could become increasingly important for gaming, entertainment and even shopping.But with Facebook's Oculus now set to release its Oculus VR headset in 2016 and Microsoft pushing forward with HoloLens, Google may decide it needs to make a bigger push into virtual reality. A Wall Street Journal report in March said Google is working on a special version of Android for virtual reality.BENGALURU: Karthik A Rao, a graduate in artificial intelligence from the Indian Institute of Science, had always been fascinated by virtual reality.

He toyed with virtual reality (VR) as a hobby and developed in three months a headset that projects 2D pictures and movies in 'pseudo 3D' mode. In March, he gave a demo of his VR prototype at an internet-of things lab in the city.

Rao's Oculus Rift-like headset is one of the earliest such virtual reality devices developed in Bengaluru, which is now latching on to a global trend. Virtual reality became a buzzword globally last year when Facebook acquired California-based Oculus VR for about $2 billion.

City engineers are taking baby steps into developing virtual and augmented reality devices, seen more as cool technology now rather than solutions to specific problems. For starters, augmented reality enables superimposing digital objects over the physical world through wearable devices while virtual reality creates an immersive as well as alternative reality such as in games.

"Back in 2013, there were very few in Bengaluru who were getting involved with augmented reality and virtual reality," said Hemant Bhaskar Surale, who was a co-organizer at the Internet-of-Things Lab (IoTBLR), a workspace in JP Nagar for building connected hardware devices. "Now, students and young professionals are really trying to adapt to these developments."

Surale is leaving to Canada to pur sue a PhD in computer science with specialization in wearable computing from the University of Waterloo.

Augmented reality has been around in furniture and realty e-commerce for a few years, helping customers visualize how a sofa or a home will look in a particular setting before buying it. "In the e-commerce space, augmented reality and virtual reality can actually add a lot of value to the product," Keshav Vijayaraghavan, co-founder of House of Blue Beans, a visual-interaction startup in Bengaluru. "So one can enable experiences in the coming times."

Makerspaces are integral in promoting this technology, providing the space for tech enthusiasts to experiment and learn. Sriram Ganesh, co-founder of Whodat, a visual-interaction startup, said these labs are a great and an inexpensive way to go about experiment making visual and augmented reality devices. " AR and VR are going to make a big splash," he said.

"We are trying to get specialized equipment exclusively for AR and VR," said Nagasai Arun Panchakarla, director of IoTBLR. "We are already organizing demos and meetups. This is an emerging field."